On the latest version of Google Earth you can look at Mars as well as the stars and Earth.

In the view selector on the menu bar choose Mars.
Then in the search field type Meliza, it will take you to a small icon of a robot.
Click on the icon and a chat window opens in which you can ask Meliza questions about Mars.
It doesn't always understand your questions but there again you are chatting to a Martian.

Just got a great tip from Tekzilla.
Did you know that Google keeps a history of all your searches if you are signed in.
Well just go to www.google.com/history and you can wade your way through all your Google searches.

I still get "il manifesto" everyday. To tell the truth more out of loyalty as I don't often read it thoroughly.
It's a well known fact that they are in financial difficulties, they have been for years.
I've heard some say that they are better off than the rest of the newspaper industry at the moment as they have always had a problem getting advertising and they know how to live on a shoe string.
But they need to renew if they want to survive. I have witnessed and even taken part in various attempts during the passed ten years to revitalising themselves, some more successful than others but nothing has really worked.
Like the rest of the left wing in Italy they have little idea of how to organise and represent a modern left of centre political movement that the younger generation of Italians feel reflects them.
This is all old hat of coarse.
I believe they have an amazing opportunity in the current old media crisis.
How about throwing the old model to the wind and going fully on-line.
Basing the the editorial model on serious blogs, forums and citizen journalism.
They already have a very active user base in the form of "centri sociali". All they would need is some young blood to manage and grow their on-line communities. Their users are well defined which would be a dream for any new media group.

On the homepage click on the nearest server to you location on the map and it will test the upload and download speeds of your internet connection.

It's a web base tool so if you want to know how fast your line is the next time your in a hotel room in Japan just click away.

They also have tables of the average speeds all over the world.

I have to admit I was surprised by the Italian stats. Southern averages are better than the northern ones.
I suppose it could be there are more users on-line so the providers bandwidth is spread thinner.

This is not a new tool but every time I show it or simply describe to a friend I have to promise to send them the link.

Shazam is an application that works on mobile phones (not just iPhones) it identifies music over the web with just a 15 second sample.

You hear a track you have never heard before, you whip out your phone, open the ap. and it records 15 seconds of the tune. It uploads the music to the Shazam servers and within a minute comes back with the artists name and the song's title. Seeing is believing.

It then gives you the option to send the tag (description) to a friend or you can simply buy it.
I promise you it's outrageous.

I don't normally support conspiracy theories, but the news that the a major cyber spy network has been set up by an unidentifiable source in China is surprising or is it (see BBC news) I think there is more to than meets the eye.
The only reason that this came to light is because the private office of the Dalai Lama promotes a policy of complete openness.

They happily let outsiders on to there computers and made public their findings.

I doubt that any other organisation would have made public the fact that their security had been breeched.
Any large company let alone government would never have admitted to it.

This happened through some very clever social engineering they are calling it "whale phishing", where individuals were targeted in such a way that there was very little one could have done.

The question begs who else has been got and is not telling. Can you honestly say you trust your government to protect you private data and do you think they would tell us if it had been compromised.

I have been playing with blip.fm.
It's an on line radio that you choose your favourite bands and it plays what it thinks you'll like.
You can search for a s0ng or artist and see who is listening to it too.
There are services out there that do almost the same thing the big difference is that you can share you station with friends and comment twitter style on the music in 140 characters.
I rather like it. Twitter can be dispersive and this gives a specific topic making it interesting.
As you try out other choices you can send messages and involve friends.
There is a system of voting (props) and you can see how many listeners are tuned in.
It has that same addictive mechanism that when you start to get comments on you choice it gives you a buzz.
It can also have the opposite effect when all you see is 0.

Finally we have an alternative to VisualHub the brilliant video encoding application for Mac that kicked the bucket last year.
A new free tool called Video Monkey. Tyler Loch has just launched version 0.1.
It got pick of the week on MacBreak Weekly this week.
It makes getting video into a format that can go onto a blog or phone child's play.
Great news for all.
Long live open-source.